Tatted Bobbies

I don't know if you ever fully appreciate how awesome you all are for putting up with my nearly manic depressive swings. I think a fragile, but easily inflated ego must be required of all those that create. We soar with the good days and crash at the drop of a hat. Lucky for me though, I have nice stable family and well...all you people to help keep me even.

Monday was a fine day around here. There were kind words, new customers and I finally worked out the last piece of the bobby pin puzzle. You see I had purchased some silver plate bobbies with a glue pad on them. They seemed the best quality to work with though I honestly had no idea how I was going to get my little flowers onto the end without either showing said glue pad or actually using glue. I think glue is fine and dandy, but it would still eave an unfinished looking back and I would be constantly afraid that they would be pulled apart once they leave my possession. So I tried a few different methods including cutting out a little ring of cloth to sew it to. Not happy with the results there at all. It's sturdy, but I wanted these to be inexpensive and adding the sewing adds to the time it takes to make them.

So what I ended up doing was tatting a single ring and putting it behind the pad. Then when I added the back row of petals I pulled the need through the stitches in the ring before I went into the picot. This effectively sandwiched the glue pad between the ring and the flower. No glue required, these suckers aren't going anywhere and it increases my creation time only slightly. Of course I still have to sew on the crystal. I did try just adding a bead to the center, but I wasn't happy with that either. Too much glue pad showing behind it. They are sussed out now and since they work up fairly quickly I've got three pairs done. I might get a few more color combos done today or later this week, but I don't want to make too many colors and waste crystals since they are the one thing I forgot to order more of this last go round.

I also worked on making some new colors of my Victoriana pieces, the necklaces and earring. I got the grape purple and a silver color of Lizbeth when I was ordering some for a custom order and even though I find the thread slightly smaller than others of the same size and it's a little stiff for my taste, they are lovely shades and I might as well use them. I need to assemble them and get photos today. You know it is funny that all it took was a single sale to get all this creative energy back. All the comments yesterday helped as well, thank you. Well I'm off to it for the day, enjoy yours.